Today Roy Green had a guest host named Geoff Currier. One of the topics was the fight between Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Teachers' Unions.
During a discussion with Buzz Hargrove, Currier posited the notion that much of what's driving North America's political battles these days is "envy". Perhaps he was deliberately being provocative in order to generate callers, but he suggested that there's really no difference between the envy felt by Occupy protesters and that felt by private sector employees towards public sector unionized workers.
You can listen to the discussion here beginning at 17:45. Note: Prior to ever listening to Buzz Hargrove, it's often advisable to wear some sort of helmet to prevent damage when smashing one's head against the wall.
Mr currier has it precisely backwards.
Why would anyone be envious of people who belong to government employee
unions whose officials negotiate wages and benefits with spineless politicians?
Said lapdog pro labour politicians who can then turn around and tax the populace
to pay those outlandish wage demands?
Who again has skin in this crazy game?
Occupy protesters are envious of those who have worked hard and accumulated wealth, private sector employees, on the other hand, are not envious of public sector unionized workers wages, pensions and benefits, they are pissed of that they are paying the freight for these government workers largesse or is that large ass?
Envy is the same. Nothing wrong with it. The difference is that the occupiers want to take and the private sector workers want to stop being taken from.
http://onecosmos.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/the-satanic-fecundity-of-envy.html
'Instead of "You shall not covet," the left insists that there is something wrong with you if you do not covet the wealth of "billionaires and millionaires." We need to have fewer of them, so that we will have less envy. It never occurs to them that envy is a personal failing that cannot be satisfied by feeding it, and that every violation of a cosmic duty gives birth to a new right.
'Which ends in the irreversible victimocracy we can hail from just this side of the historical knife-edge, and which requires just one more little push to be terminal. In November we will know if we have fully plunged into that dark new world.'
Yes, exactly, EXCEPT the occupy maggots are envious of my hard earned money, whereas I am envious of the public sector getting all my hard earned money.
"Envy is the same. Nothing wrong with it." LAS @ 9:16.
Something wrong with you then. The Seven Deadly Sins: "sloth, greed, vanity, wrath, envy, gluttony, lust.
Currier sounds like there's not much going on upstairs. Yikes. Roy, come back!
I avoid listening to Mr. Hargrove. But thanks, Robert, just the same for the opportunity.
I harbour no envy toward teachers -- and certainly none of the kind associated with the stupidity and uselessness of the Occupy Movement, so-called.
The part I find unacceptable is the refusal of teachers in particular to accept that the fundamental economic circumstances facing Ontario today apply to them, as well as to everyone else, to wit:
1. Dalton McGuinty came to power in 2003 by promising not to raise taxes and not to run deficits. He even signed a pledge to that effect with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (not the finest hour of the CTF, I would add). Since then he has raised taxes to the point where they are likely having a negative impact on provincial government revenues (refer to the Laffer curve) and has nearly doubled the provincial debt -- all, I might add, to the benefit of public sector union members. The purpose of Mr. McGuinty's original commitment, I suppose, was to protect the competitive position of Ontario, which had been built up by the reforms introduced by the Harris government.
2. It is beyond any argument, but sadly not at all beyond the willful ignorance of many in the public sector, that private sector businesses and private sector workers have to generate enough revenue to pay not only for their own living, but also fifty or sixty percent of the cost of the public sector (public sector employees also being subject to taxes).
3. Whatever the purposes behind Mr. McGuinty's change of position once in office, we stand today with a provincial government deficit of about $16 billion per year -- about the same amount that causes such consternation in the case of the State of California, which has about three or so times the population of Ontario.
4. If we accept for the purposes of argument that raising tax rates would lead to lower provincial revenues, simple arithmetic would tell anyone capable of understanding it -- and I would assume that that would include, you know, teachers, who are in the business -- that a jurisdiction that spends 70 percent of its $90 billion per year discretionary budget on employment costs is going to have to reduce those employment costs by something in the order of 25% to get to fiscal balance ($16 billion/(70% * $90 billion); my numbers may be off somewhat, but are better than directionally correct).
5. As I was explaining to my wife, who works in the public sector, this morning (we were having this very conversation), there are only two ways to share this cost around -- either everyone takes the cut (hopefully not in the Bob Rae social contract way, which implied that "what you do is of no value anyway, so you won't mind taking a few days off without pay") or we downsize the public sector by 25 percent (hopefully through prioritization -- according to Dr. Drummond's approach --coupled with privatization, where some or all of the employment can be relaunched on a commercially viable basis). That, unfortunately, is the grim reality of the situation, folks.
Instead of accepting these facts and developing constructive responses, however, I find that the usual Pavlovian response from teachers in particular is that they would rather see "taxes on corporations" raised (which is actually the Occupy Movement envy-driven "solution"). When I point out that that would actually be contrary to the interests of their pension fund, which derives a significant degree of its income, through share ownership, from the corporations whose taxes would have to rise, the second-order Pavlovian response is that "our pension fund isn't the only one that owns the corporations", as if that makes any difference.
So, Houston, I'd say we have a problem.
David, Wow! Well said, sir!
Snaggle: the 7 Deadly Sins make a good basis for a Morgan Freeman and nothing else.
Hargrove is a raving idiot. Whenever he gets cornered he always uses the same stupid statement....."all the studies that I have seen......"
Yeah, sure Buzz. When your head is so stuck in Bolshevism, all you will look for is Bolshevik "studies". What an absolute idiot.
Hargrove, Jim Sinclair, all from the same cloth.
Class warfare at its worst.
When they talk, chalk on a blackboard sounds better than these two communists
DSoutham. Another way to reduce labour costs is simply to let attrition do it for your. IOW don't hire replacements for some/many of retiring pub servants. Yes, they go off to their fat entitlements and the taxpayer is on the hook but that was going to happen anyway. Let technology, efficiencies and program lapses do the trick for you.
For example the departments of redundancy departments that have invaded our communities have got to go. No more "Capital Region Districts" and such other unnecessary abominations and obscene additional layers of government bureaucracy is a good starting point (as if we need that - more BBQ, lawn height checkers).
The beauty is, who's going to complain - the retired civil servants? OK the kumbaya Occupiers will cry some more (who actually cares), but soon he/she will eventually get their dream job as some swivel servants do have to be replaced. All these clowns had to do is, what we boomers did, wait a while, be patient, then become part of the "establishment."
That's what the hippies, except for Suzuki et al, did. Suzuki just became a rich hippie.
There really is no choice in the matter anyway, given demographic and budget realities. My point is always the same in these circumstances - do you trust a statist or a realist to do this?
Would Obama, McGuinty, Mulcair et do this? No they won't so out they go to the political scrap heap.
As the saying goes, if you're not a socialist at twenty, you haven't got a heart; it you're still a socialist at 50 you haven't got a brain.
Shamrock, 8:46a.m. --
I agree with you, and you even used my favourite Churchill line! One caveat, though: do we have the time for attrition to do the job? Everyday that goes on, more permanent damage is being done...
The fundamental difference between you and Basil Hargrove is that you understand that there is a problem: society is out balance, despite his, McGuinty's, Obama's and Mulcair's ostrich-like assertions to the contrary.
A propos of the Churchill quote, we're along way from getting to the necessary social and political understanding and consensus, and I don't think we can wait thirty years.
Unions will always vote, for leaders, dullard thugs like Hargrove Luenza Hoffa Trumpka because their electorates have been to lazy or timid to start their own companies for the most part, they are the Archie Bunker types at home, but scared as a mouse at the union hall. Hargrove has always been a moron, and for a talk show host to go to a moron for advice, well that says it all.
Bruce is right.
It's resentment not envy.
It has always been my steadfast belief that civic workers should never earn more than private sector workers within their community. In our small town of 5000 here in BC we have 6 staff making over $100,000 per year. Possibly over qualified but underworked for those qualifications. I truly think that councilors attend the Union of BC municipalties conventions and return with the conviction that their staff are owed! The inside staff in our small town is paid more than the outside staff.
The unspoken thought process for salaried and union workers is that the taxpayer can always pay more. They have in the past and will in the future. At the municipal level there is no measure to determine what the community can or cannot afford. As we should all know by now if overetaxation at the provincial or federal level can destroy revenues then most certainly it can at municipal levels as well.
We have provincial governments who cowtow to the most vocal and best organized groups such as the education and health care unions. Not many are prepared to challenge this.
Buzz needs to go back to that Muskoka cottage the Union bought him on his retirement with money forcibly taken from the workers pay cheques as "dues" without their consent, and he needs to STFU.
My father often said (and he negotiated opposite side of the table to Buzz) - "better to keep your mouth shut and let everyone think you were a fool than to speak out and prove them all right", as Buzz has just done... again.